Updated 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 19, 2006

If the last two meetings were any indication, this matchup could be a doozy.

The Cardinals and Tigers, two of the most tradition-rich franchises in baseball history, split a pair of seven-game classics decades ago. St. Louis' Gas House Gang got the best of Detroit in 1934, and Mickey Lolich pitched the Tigers to a comeback victory against Bob Gibson in '68.

And the two intense managers, Tony La Russa of St. Louis and Detroit's Jim Leyland, are old friends. Leyland spent five years scouting and working for La Russa and the Cardinals before returning to the bench this season.

"I never had a finer boss," Leyland said recently.

Now, it's Detroit's olde English "D" against the Cardinals' famous logo, birds on the bat.

"I admire the franchise. It's just a great history," La Russa said, referring to the Tigers. "It's great to see the place packed again. It's obviously personal relationships with the general manager, the manager and I know their coaches well. ... So there's a lot there. And I'm a baseball fan, the story of the Tigers this year, it's just a great story."

The AL champions and their stable of power arms will be coming off a week of rest when the World Series starts. The Cardinals, on the other hand, needed the full seven games to beat the New York Mets in the NL Championship Series.

"I don't think it means anything this time of year, whether we got more rest than they do," Leyland said. "This time of year, all teams go on adrenaline. That's not going to have any bearing on anything."

In June, the Tigers swept three games from St. Louis in Detroit during interleague play, part of an eight-game losing streak for the Cardinals.

After stunning the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, the Tigers completed a four-game sweep of Oakland in the ALCS last Saturday, making it five consecutive years that a wild-card team has reached the World Series.

Justin Verlander, Joel Zumaya and the rest of a Detroit pitching staff that led the majors in ERA (3.84) will face a Cardinals lineup anchored by Pujols, the reigning NL MVP.

St. Louis appeared to be fading when it backed into the NL Central title on the final day of the regular season, but the Cardinals bounced back to beat San Diego in four games in the first round.

Then they got past the favored Mets in the NLCS, winning 3-1 Thursday night in New York.

That gave the Cards their 17th pennant. Yet they're still searching for their first World Series title since 1982.

The first World Series between St. Louis and Detroit was 72 years ago, and no two franchises have met twice in the Series over such a long span while representing the same cities. The Athletics and Giants had an 84-year span (1905-1989), but both moved during that time.